


Wedding Bands

by orphan_account



Category: South Park
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 11:30:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14283978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Molly Tucker is fascinated by her father's rings.





	Wedding Bands

Molly Tucker had been fascinated with her father’s wedding rings for a while now. Tweek had first noticed it a few weeks back when he kept catching her staring at his ring. In the beginning, he assumed it was because of the glint it made in the sun, but quickly caught on. After she tried to awkwardly touch it one evening while he was making dinner, he had finally had enough. It would be impossible to watch her continue without laughing at her. The blond man slid the ring off his finger and dropped it into his daughter’s hand. 

“There’s my ring.”

Molly’s eyes had widened like she had just been granted a challenge, and her mouth went agape. If Craig had been there, he would’ve made an offhand comment about how he had raised Gollum, or something. She held it up close to her eyes and ran her finger over the top. The boiling water in the pot behind them was amplified by the silence. 

Tweek coughed. “Sweetie? Everything okay? You’re kind of freaking me out...” she really did look like Gollum. 

She finally looked up at him. “Why is this one different?”

“What?”

“This isn’t the same ring. Where’s the other ring?" she looked up at him, with malice. "Are you a robot, or a clone? Where's my real Dad!?”

Oh. Ohhhhhh. Well, she certainly was his daughter, that was for sure. After turning the stove off (handling this crisis was more important than his stew), he crouched down and clasped his hands over Molly's, who was still holding his ring. “Of course I'm your Dad! We get new wedding rings all the time, want me to show you?”

...

“This is our ring collection,” Tweek said, as he pulled down a wooden box from the top of his dresser. “We went through a lot of them as kids, but now that we’re older we only get a new pair every five years or so...”

He sat next to her on his bed and opened the glass lid. The display was filled with more rings than Molly thought was possible. The very first ring he pulled out was made of blue plastic, and the top, which stuck out like a needle, had been all chewed up. “Oh golly, this is over thirty years old now..." he grimaced. "This is my engagement ring. Your father proposed at recess when we were ten, but I’m sure you’ve heard that story.” Tweek handed the remains of the blue monstrosity over to her. “It was a really big sugar jewel, and I tried so hard not to eat it, but I couldn’t help it. I devoured it before school was out that day.”

“I’ve seen a ring pop before, Dad.”

“Of course you have.” Tweek sighed, and picked up two mood rings. “These are from our first wedding.” The bands were plain aside from the thick strip of liquid crystal covering most of their surface. The inside of the rings were worn down, and the silver paint had rubbed off. Molly was beginning to understand just how much her parents cherished them. “We got married in the late spring, and Craig had staged the whole thing as a surprise. I thought it was Summer Kick-Off Party....”he paused. "Well, it was, but it was also our Wedding."

Molly pointed at the next pair, which were silver bands so thin they looked like wire. “When’d you get those?”

Tweek set the mood rings back, and picked up the bands. “We got these around two years later, when we were thirteen. We thought that the mood rings were gaudy, and this is all we could afford... But I loved them.”

Tweek set them down and held up two silver bands, both with small topazes in them. “You know, I think Craig just got really carried away in High School. He got these after he got his first job, and blue topaz is supposed to represent your fourth anniversary...” after putting them back, he ran his fingers down the other rings in the display. “He got sapphire for the fifth, and amethyst for the sixth, and onyx for the seventh,” his finger stopped on a pair of class rings. “I don’t know why we got those. They’re gaudy. I can’t believe Clyde still wears his...” 

“Uncle Clyde?” 

Tweek hummed in response, and picked up a pair of bands with numbers stamped into them. “These were my idea. These numbers are latitude and longitude, which tell us where we are in the world. When your father was at MIT, his was stamped for home, and mine was stamped for Cambridge.” 

“Was that a hard time?”

Tweek ran his nail over the dips of the engraving, as he had all those years ago in search of comfort. Even now, the feeling of Craig having to leave him made him want to cry. “Yes, but it gave me a million more reasons to love him... not that I needed it.” 

Molly picked up a pair of rings that finally looked like the real deal. “Here we go... I had just earned my bachelor’s degree, and Craig was gearing up to start his master’s program. Making it official seemed like the only option... so we did! It was a simple wedding up in high country, and we camped out that weekend for our honeymoon. We forgot to tell everyone we got married for like, a month.” he laughed.

“Wow...” Molly wasn’t surprised at that fact, looking back at all of the rings leading up to, you know, their actual rings. 

“But as far as your father’s concerned, we only made it official because I wanted his name.”

Molly folded her arms in like a little bird. “Tweek Tweak?” she chirped, with a knowing smile. His face was expressionless, and while that’d be normal for her Poppa, it was very scary on her Dad. When she dropped her arms, he barked out laughing. 

“Aha! Got you!!" he howled. "That’s what you get for messing with me!” 

While he was laughing at her, she looked at the rest of the rings. They all seemed plain in comparison to the ones of their childhood. She ran her fingers over them. “Why’re they all so bland?” 

“Well, I think that’s just with age. There’s beauty in simplicity.” Tweek wasn’t in the mood to explain the engravings in them, so he thought it best to wait to tell her. 

“Why are there so many of them?”

“Craig had the idea... we’ve been together so long that it’d be hard to imagine what losing a ring so old and meaningful would be like. I know I would be a mess, at least...” Suddenly, his memory hit him like a train, and his eyes widened. “Molly dear, what time is it?”

Molly pulled out her phone. “It’s four-fifty.” 

Tweek nearly dropped the box. “Shit! We’re late to pick up your brother!”

...

"Honey, weren't we supposed to have your stew tonight? Why'd we eat out?" Craig yawned and snuggled in closer to his husband.

"Molly thought I was a clone, so I had to prove to her that I wasn't."

"Oh..." Craig said, before his eyes snapped open. "Wait. What?"

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all thought I was dead, right? This is just my little fantasy, about them growing up, Craig going through the AeroAstro Program @ MIT, having two kids, blah blah blah... Feel free to follow me on tumblr @sleekcreek (it's back up!). I'll probably be uploading a story where Molly makes Craig show her all the rings soon...


End file.
